Performative body spaces corporeal topographies in literature, theatre, dance, and the visual arts (Rodopi, 2010)
Papers from the international and interdisciplinary workshop Body Spaces: Corporeal Topographies in Literature, Theatre, Dance, and the Visual Arts, at the University of British Colombia, Vancouver, Canada, on March 14-16, 2008
Includes bibliographical references and index
"The human body as cultural object always has and is a performing subject, which binds the political with the theatrical, shows the construction of ethnicity and technology, unveils private and public spaces, transgresses race and gender, and finally becomes a medium that overcomes the borders of art and life. Since there cannot be a universal definition of the human body due to its culturally performative role as a producer of interactive social spaces, this volume discusses body images from diverse cultural, historical, and disciplinary perspectives, such as art history, human kinetics and performance studies. The fourteen case studies reach from Asian to European studies, from 19th century French culture to 20th century German literature, from Polish Holocaust memoirs to contemporary dance performances, from Japanese avant-garde theatre to Makeover Reality TV shows. This volume is of interest for performance studies artists as well. By focusing on the intersection of body and space, all contributions aim to bridge the gap between art practices and theories of performativity. The innovative impulse of this approach lies in the belief that there is no distinction between performing, discussing, and theorizing the human body, and thus fosters a unique transdisciplinary and international collaboration around the theme performative body spaces."--P. [4] of cover
Introduction: performative body spaces / Markus Hallensleben -- Metaphors of dancing and the human body in Nazi concentration camps / Bożena Karwowska -- From dance under the swastika to movement education: a study of embodied culture / Patricia Vertinsky -- Political body spaces in the performances of William Forsythe / Gabriele Brandstetter -- Reading skin signs: decoding skin as the fluid boundary between self and other in Yoko Tawada / Jeremy Redlich -- The body in space: layers of gender in Japanese classical dance / Colleen Lanki -- Counter-narrativity and corporeality in Kishida Rio's Ito Jigoku / Yasuko Ikeuchi -- The absence of voices in the theatre space: Ku Nauka's production of Medea / Eiichiro Hirata -- Staging culture- staging nature: Polynesian performance as nature and nature as performance in Hawaii / Sabine Wilke -- Moving through fashion in nineteenth-century France / Sima Godfrey -- Reading bodies: female secrecy and sexuality in the works of Renoir and Degas / Kathryn Brown -- Corporeal topographiess of the image zone: from Oskar Kokoschka's murder of metaphor to Georges Bataille's acéphale / Rainer Rumold -- Somatechnics and makeover reality TV: the symbiotic viewer/participant relationship / Beth Pentney -- The body as object: from body image to meta-body / Robert Pritchard -- Touched: organization, control and emergence in choreographed performace systems / Henry Daniel